‘We are familiar faces’: are local peacemakers the answer to Nigeria’s bandit crisis?

Nigeria has struggled to contain bandit groups who kidnap and kill but some communities are finding their own solutions

In the 1980s, Dayyabu Abba-Kurfi’s striking prowess for his high school football club in north-west Nigeria earned him the unlikely nickname Doncaster, after the English third-tier side more than 3,800 miles away. More than four decades later, in August last year, he scored perhaps his most important goal, brokering a peace pact between his neighbours in Kurfi, in Katsina state, and the bandit gangs terrorising communities there.

“For months now, we have experienced relative calm … our people are rebuilding their livelihoods,” the 60-year-old civil servant and local politician said.